Indian Summer

weekend it appears to be, which means being outside, riding and such. Yesterday Scott and I got out with Jim Behrens for a great ride, I ended up with 45 miles and the reason for that was I rode to Scott's and then we rode to Jim's, did our ride, rode back to Scotts to hook up a computer on my CAAD9 and then I rode home for a total of 45 miles. Great day yesterday too.
We're headed out again today on the road to take full advantage of the nice weather and tomorrow we're going to hit up the cross course at KSU and also do a little course work to boot. I don't think there will be too many nice weekends like this left this year so we might as well use em while we can.

We're signed up for the State CX Championships which is being held at John Bryan State Park in Yellow Springs near Dayton this year instead of Columbus. We signed up early so hopefully we'll get a good start spot. I'm racing in the Mens 35+ Cat.3 instead of the 45+. I did pretty good at Harbin in this group with a not so good starting position, so I'll give it another go in this field and see what happens with a better start.

Looking to get a new TT / Triathlon rig for next season. Headed to Bike Authority after our Kent ride on Sunday to do some business with the Big Cheese. Hopefully all will turn out well.

Catch ya later.

Who let the chickens out?

Thats what I want to know. On the last lap of round 2 at Bretts today the chickens were out and running all over the place and I almost hit one of em. Heck, if it wasn't for that I mighta won!

Seriously hard race for me today. I think I burned all my matches yesterday and didn't have much in the tank for today, not to mention my back was on fire from the first couple laps on til the end of the race, actually I heard quite a few saying their backs were hurting. Lots of great competition today too. We had a good showing again and took the win (Shawn) Matt 2nd. and Tony 6th. great job you guys!! Robert was 3rd. in the Killer B's and Scott was 7th.

We have an off week this week and I need it to recharge the batteries. After that we only have 4 more races, 3 of ours and the State Champs then its slow comfortable stuff for a while, lookin' forward to it too.

Chagrin River Challenge CX A Race

It was good racing today on Brett's course in Bainbridge. The course was muddier than hell though with a major mud pit leading into singletrack that lead us into another small stream/ditch that was muddier than hell too, it wasn't bad though because you could ride through it and feel like you were going somewhere, rather than just spinning your wheels.

I feel like I had a good race minus the few bobbles that I had in the singletrack. One of them caused me to loose at least three spots due to me performing an endo after I ran into a big course cone right in front of the scorers tent, I should have gotten a few more points in the overall standings just for doing that #10 somersault off the bike. I had to put my chain back on after I unjammed it from the 3rd. eye and that casued me quite a bit of time right there, but oh well, others were having problems of their own too.

I ended up racing with a strong group of riders and we kept attacking each other throughout the race dropping a few here and there only to have them catch back on in a different section of the course. In the end Dave Steiner and I were together for the last lap and I knew if I could keep it upright in the singletrack we could battle it out to the line. My idea was to run the last ditch crossing right before the finish and go to the opposite side of Dave and possibly get back on quick, clip in and nail it to the finish. We had taken the right side of the ditch pretty much the whole race and Dave was leading up to the ditch so I went left, dismounted, jumped the ditch and quickly glanced over at Dave to see him riding it and slightly bobble. I remounted and missed my pedal and bobbled myself and by then Dave was back on and charging hard for the line, Yes, I heard him. We drag raced through the muddy section before the finish racing side by side but Dave puts out a little more wattage than I do and came across the finish a bike length ahead of me. That was great racing Dave, nice job!

Tony started fast with a great start and held 3rd. position for most of the race until Dan Quinlan passed him in the pwer section and held 3rd. for the rest of the time. Tony finished 4th and Shawn 5th, both of them in the $, great job everyone.

Today were back at Bretts for round two. Now that the equipment and gear is all clean it's time destroy everything again, we just have to keep plenty of quarters handy for the spray car wash.

See everyone on Sunday.

Raccoon CX

Gary Dugovich put on another great cross race just outside of Pittsburgh that drew some top notch competition. There were many from the Cleveland area that raced and many from the Pittsburgh area also. It was nice to see many from our area travelling to support another promoter. The course was pretty much the same as the previous course that Gary and his Beaver Valley Velo team had designed with only a few changes. It was very hard in places and fast and technical in others with a sweet stepped run up in the woods.
I raced the Masters 40+, but it was a combined 40, 50+ with both groups getting scored separately. Rudy, Jeff C., Gunnar S., Derek were all lined in the front group with some guys that I have never raced with before. Gary said go and we all took off fast. The usual suspects went to the front and set a fast pace and after a couple laps it was narrowed to 5 in the lead group and then it sorted out from there. In the end I finished 5th overall and 2nd. 40+ in a 15 man Master field. Gunnar Shogren won, Rudy, Jeff, Derek and me, not bad and I even made a few clams to go with it. After our race was over Jeff and Rudy opted to race again with the 3,4's and both were in the money in that race also, wow, nice job going back to back, and after winning the 50+ Masters.

Scott raced the 3-4 field and did well. He wasn't quite used to that pace for 50 minutes but will get more used to it as time goes on. He raced strong and finished fast. After the finish he collapsed in the grass as do so many of us after a hard race and said that the finish was the best part of the race, I could only agree.

Tony did the 1,2 race and although he raced strong, his legs weren't quite up to the task. He was racing well for half the race but the speed and power that the 1,2 field was laying down was a little much. He backed it off and rode consistently to the finish. Matt won the 1,2 race in style. He rode completely away from everyone and showed us all that he is the force in cyclocross this year. He came across the line with hands raised high and didn't even appear to be breathing
hard. Very nice job Matt and congrats on a great win over a very strong field.

Thanks to Gary for the race and hopefully he'll have it again next year. Also looking forward to the Chagrin River Challenge and racing both days this weekend. Bring it on!

Not a dinnner

and a movie, but just a movie. We went to see Race Across the Sky last night at the Severance Town Center, it was an awesome movie and a great documentary and it was nice to see alot of our racing friends there as well. I will buy this movie if and when it comes out on DVD. However, it's been a long time since we have all gone to the movies together, probably since the boys were young and we all went to a Disney movie, so it was nice for all of us to get together to go see a movie. There were two things that I noticed about how movie theatres have changed in the last few years since I have been to one. One, being stadium style seating, this was a great invention and it enables you to see the whole screen without anyones head blocking your view, I definately like this ALOT!
Number two thing I noticed, and please correct me if I'm wrong here, and far be it for me to complain but, the prices........Holy Cow, have the movies became expensive or what ? For the 4 of us to get in the door it was 50 bucks, and to get popcorn and drinks and a box o candy was another $42.75, for a grand total of $92.75 just to go to the movies? Is this expensive or what? or is this just me getting old and out of touch with the times? No wonder there are so many Blockbuster and Hollywood video stores out there. There sure weren't many cars in the parking lot either, but it was a Thursday night and not a weekend. Okay I'm done complaining now, but I will say that the next time I go to the movies it will have to be something very worth while.

Peace

Training ride, Browns game and Beer

Tony, Scott and I rode a nice 45 mile non-redlined pace training ride this morning. It was a fun ride with a few climbs but most of all it felt good to get out on the road bikes for a longer ride again. When we got home the Browns & Steelers were in the beginning of the 2nd quarter with Cleveland not doing too bad. We had a bowl of chili, a few of these Jacks Pumpkin Spice Ales brewed by Michelob and are now sittin back relaxin, good day today. This is also a view from my back door looking across the street into the nursery, it's beautiful this time of the year.

They don't get much harder than that

if they do, I haven't did one. Tom Humphrey and crew did an outstanding job once again with the organization of the race and the layout of this course. Unfortunately the weather did not want to cooperate overnight Friday and into Saturday morning and with all the rain that we recieved, it made the great designed course very muddy and very hard to ride, it did stop raining by race time though. By the time the A race rolled around at 1:45 the mud had a thick consistency of semi thick concrete due to the previous races. The mud stuck to everything and I would say that by the time the race was over the bike was twice as heavy as in the beginning of the race. I did what I could but struggled, as did most everyone else, some just struggle faster, some a little slower, but in the end we are all suffering out there, but we continue to do it weekend after weekend, the mud must be in our veins so to speak. My teammates did a great job once again as always in all races. We had 4 in the top 10 in the loaded A race and 2 in the top 10 in the B race. Julie was 2nd in the womens race also, Congratultions to everyone today that raced, everyone was a winner that finished today in my book. If you got a top placing and won money, that made it all the more sweeter! Thanks to Tom Humphrey, Greg Jackson and the crew that put this all together, it was a great event.

CX Beer

Gonna have to get some of this high powered DeKonnick Tripel 8% Belgian Pilsner before the series is over, mmmm, I can taste it now, traditional old style Belgian brewing at it's finest.

CX weekend's are great

Thursday we made the trip down to Cincinnati for the OVCX UCI3 weekend of racing. It just poured rain on the way down and into the night, briefly stopping at times during the day on Friday, so you can imagine what Devou Park, (which was where the first race took place), was going to look like and eventually become after all the races finished up. First, Devou Park in Kentucky is very beautiful and old and completely surrounded by a beautiful rolling golf course. The course snaked it's way through portions of the golf course as well, in some spots only a few feet away from greens and tee boxes and even some cart paths were used as road sections.

This part of Cinci and Kentucky were supposed to get 5 1/2 inches of rain Thursday and Friday then clear up overnight into Saturday.........

Scott and Tony both raced in the deep mud and came away with very good finishing positionings, Scott was 12th in the Cat. 4 race and Tony was 4th. in the Cat. 2-3 race, both racing very strong in the nasty conditions. I on the other hand wimped out and saved my ammo and my bike for Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday was Sunset Park in Middletown, North of Cincinnati. The weather had cleared overnight and was warm and sunny at the start of the first race and surprisingly very dry for the amount of rain that had fallen in the previous days. This course is all enclosed in a city park and is more of a technical course with lots of up and down 18o's and back to back sand pits and is also a great spectator course, you can see just about the whole race going on if you sit somewhere in the middle of the course.

Tony raced the 2-3 race again and finished 11th. in a very large field and said his legs were not responding well the whole race, most likely from the mudfest the day before.

I lined up in the Elite Masters 35-45+ 1-2-3 race and while looking around knew this was going to be hard. We took off hard up the road climb and I had a good position going into the grass and held my position for over half of the race. At about 1/2 hour going full throttle I had to back it off a little and thats when I started getting passed. Technically I rode a good race, but being anerobic for that amount of time I wasnt able to motor up the climb on the road and the steep mud climb in the back of the course like I was able to earlier in the race. I finished strong though (for me) and wasn't close to being lapped by the strong leaders.

Sunday was Harbin Park in Fairfield, just Northwest of Cinci. They changed the course somewhat from last year and took away a few of the long grinder uphills that were pure legbusters and threw in a few more technical sections, not to say that there weren't any leg buster uphills, cuz there were a few of those too. this course had a few mud pits, sand runs and a wood chip bowl section that you had to bunnyhop in and out of. I liked this course mucho more than the course they had laid out last year.

Tony raced the 2-3 race again and his legs felt much better than the day before he said. The field was much larger than the days before too and he managed to finish 10th. in a hard fought 45+ minutes. He said he battled with with a few other riders, all knowing that they were in the top 10 and none of them wanted to concede their positions. in the end Tony attacked on the finishing stretch to land the top 10 spot, Nice work T.

I switched gears in this race and signed up for the Mens Cat.3 Masters 35+ rather than doing the Elite race and just tailgunning, but I also chose not to do the Mens Cat.3 Masters 45+ which is my group since I am a 3 and my racing age is 46. I think I made the correct decision too, although on the starting line the racers were looking pretty fit and strong, as it should be for these UCI races. We took off 30 seconds after the 2-3's and soon I worked my way up into that group and was chasing the leaders of the 35+ group that I was in. I felt strong and technically I was riding a good race, I do want to emphasize race too because I dont consider doing the Elite 1,2,3 race a race for me, since all I'm doing is riding alone most of the time hoping not to get lapped by Elite Cat.1 35+ guys, I'm not trying to fool myself or anyone anymore, I don't belong in that group, the Cat 2-3 race, yes, the Masters 35+ Cat 3 race, yes, but not the Elite group. The whole 45 minutes or whatever it was that I was racing, I was having fun, no doubt anerobic and pushing myself to the limit, but so were the guys ahead of me and we were of the same ability, thats racing and thats why there are age and category classifications, so I was extremely happy with my decision and the way the race went for me. in the end I finished 7th in the Masters Cat.3 35+ and somewhere in the middle of the 2-3 group as well and had fun RACING.

Overall it was a great weekend watching my teammates race and all of our friends from the Cleveland area race scene. Props though go out to 14 year old teammate Robert Sroka for racing in the Mens 2-3 group and racing extremely strong in a very fast field, this kid is no doubt going to be one of the strongest racers in this area in a few years, keep up the awesome work Robert and it was fun racing with you at Harbin.

This weekend is the Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die race presented by Spin in Willoughby, no doubt to be a great event.

Cincinnati CX Fesitval

3 races in 3 days this weekend down in Kentucky, Cincinnati and Middleton. It all depends though on the weather and conditions for Friday if I'm going to race. The weather experts are calling for an 80% chance of T-storms on Friday, and if the course would happen to be anything like the course last weekend, then I dont particularily want to spend all that time cleaning my equipment, especially when I dont know if there would be any hoses or cleaning stuff to use. Anyway, Saturday and Sunday are looking good and we're pretty excited about racing. I'm going to try to avoid getting my a$$ handed to me this weekend as has been the case the last two weekends racing with the big bois. I am still racing in the Masters 35 & 45+ Elite 1,2,3 group which is by no means a walk in the park, but, a little more even for me than the A races of our series. I did alot of volume over the summer, training and racing triathlons, I hope that I'm not too far spent for the remainder of cross season. We shall see.

See you all tomorrow.